This matter is before the court on the Application for Attorney for Debtor for Additional
Compensation (“the Application”) filed herein on October 13, 2008. The Chapter 13 Trustee
filed a Limited Objection to Application for Compensation (“the Objection”) on November 2,
2008, and the Debtor filed a Response on November 4, 2008. The Application seeks $1,625.00
in additional fees incurred in regard to the Debtor’s successful opposition to the Trustee’s
Motion to Dismiss.

The Trustee disputes the reasonableness of the billed rate of $250.00 per hour.
Specifically, the Trustee contends that this rate is excessive in regard to certain services which
she maintains are essentially clerical in nature. These services include reviewing account
information and preparing and filing documents with the court. The Trustee also objects to
compensation for travel from counsel’s office to the court and back again, and for a half-hour of
hearing time for this matter. The Trustee maintains that counsel for the Debtor appeared in
numerous cases on the September 4, 2008 Chapter 13 docket, and that the hearing in this
particular matter did not take a half-hour.

The court believes that $250.00 per hour is a reasonable rate of compensation for
experienced bankruptcy counsel who has continuously demonstrated efficient and effective use
of his time in his applications before this court. That hourly rate might be excessive for
attorneys who make less effective use of their billable hour. Counsel has regularly taken a case
through confirmation with eight to ten billable hours while many other attorneys require twice
that amount of time to accomplish the same result. Further, while certain tasks billed for may
be more clerical than legal in nature, it would probably be more expensive to the client for
counsel to have a paralegal on staff to do them than to perform the work himself in a relatively
short period of time, as was done here. The court does agree with the Trustee that travel to
and from one’s local office is not compensable, and that the time spent on the hearing on the
motion to dismiss was considerably less than a half-hour. The court will therefore deny
compensation in the amount of $200.00 (.8 hours x $250.00), and award additional fees in the
amount of $1425.00.